


Captain Proton: Duplicates From the Fifth Dimension!

by greg-powells-mustache (GregPowellsMustache)



Series: Captain Proton and the Danger Patrol! [1]
Category: Captain Proton - in-universe, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: A Ridiculous Space Romp, Constance Is A Raging Lesbian, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GregPowellsMustache/pseuds/greg-powells-mustache
Summary: When a renowned scientist turns out to be a robot with fifth-dimensional technology in its chest, the President of Earth knows there's only one team who can sort this out. But after two years out of the field, Captain Proton and friends are out of their depth -- and they're going to need a little help.





	1. Chapter 1

It's never a good thing when the Planetary Defense Force calls me in to headquarters. Usually, that means someone's trying to take over the Galaxy -- so I get to fight them about it.

That's my job, after all.

Or at least it was, until I quit the PDF entirely, moved to Mars... And let me tell you, my quality of life improved _overnight._ The PDF wasn't exactly sad to see me go, either. Apparently they didn't like me teaching cadets how to hotwire their shuttles or complaining about the coffee.

So the fact that they'd asked me to come to headquarters was weird in itself, because that meant they didn't think they could handle this on their own -- and even more unsettling, they wouldn't give me any details about _why._

My other major concern at the moment was the fact that I'd forgotten to eat anything for pretty much the entire last day of the flight. I know people tend to think of me as spontaneous, but getting thrown off my routine is _not_ an easy thing for me to manage. So the first order of business, upon arriving at headquarters, was to locate the nearest peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

_...Maybe two of them, actually,_ I thought. _And then I'll figure out what's going on -- they're not expecting me for a while anyway._

Look, I know my priorities, okay?

It had been a while since I'd been on Earth. I'd make the trip back once in a while to visit friends and chosen family. As is a natural consequence of fifteen years of having no life outside of work, most of those friends and family were in the PDF, and lived around here.

But I'd avoided this particular building in the two years since I'd quit, and it felt strange and unfamiliar -- not that I had any trouble remembering where the cafeteria was.

I was nearly there when I ran into none other than Constance Goodheart, formerly my field mathematician. Last I'd heard, she was working on a project to increase the distance of subspace Jumps -- she'd been promoted since I was here last, a lieutenant's chevrons pinned to her uniform jacket.

I snapped into a salute and did my best to suppress the big stupid grin trying to break loose. "Lieutenant Goodheart."

Constance rolled her eyes, but she was smiling -- not even trying to hold onto the decorum that her uniform demanded. Of course, back on the _Firebrand_ , we'd just pretended that those regulations didn't exist. "At ease, _Captain._ Now get over here and give me a hug."

"Yes, ma'am." And of course, I complied -- who am I to disobey a direct order? "You don't seem very surprised to see me. Did they tell you I was coming? --And hey, you didn't tell me you'd been promoted."

"It was my idea, actually. And the promotion's pretty recent. I haven't really had much time, not since..." The smile was gone then, and she suddenly seemed very _tired._ "Let's just say that it's been a busy couple of weeks."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yeah." Constance sighed. "Thanks for coming."

"They didn't tell me anything about why I'm here, but I figured if they were calling, they were in trouble. So what is it this time?"

"I... I think I'd better let the President explain it to you... You should probably go."

I exhaled slowly. We'd worked together for eight years -- and I'd never seen her look so exhausted.

"Well, he's gonna have to wait. I've gotta eat something first." I nodded down the hall. "Come on, I'll buy you a soda, we can catch up."

"I can't, sorry. I've got work to do in the lab." Constance smiled apologetically. "We should do that, though."

I studied her for a moment, and it struck me then that she wasn't wearing any makeup, not even a trace of mascara. It was strange, for her. I don't mean to make her sound vain or superficial here -- she's the best officer I ever worked with in the PDF, selfless to a _fault,_ and has the strictest and most terrifying sense of self-discipline I've ever seen. She took the PDF's appearance regulations extremely seriously, and it was impressive as _hell_. I'd once seen her apply every layer of her morning routine, with a surgeon's precision, in five minutes flat.

_"There,"_ she'd said, _"I've got my battle armor. Time to save the universe... again."_

And if she was leaving that out of her day, that meant that something was _horribly_ wrong.

"Are you okay?" I asked quietly.

"I'm fine." But she _wasn't_ \-- there was something strange in her laugh -- stress, _grief_ , even. "It's, uh... Look, you've got other things to worry about right now. Like I said, we'll have time to talk later."

"Hey." I caught her arm as she went to leave. "Tell me what's going on."

"I... I can't." She sighed, her composure regained somewhat -- but there were tears in her eyes. "Sorry."

"It's something about why I'm here. Got it." I exhaled slowly. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah."

After eight years, I knew damn well there wasn't any arguing with Constance Goodheart -- so I wasn't going to argue.

"Okay, I believe you -- but at the soonest opportunity, I'm getting you out of here. You look like you've been working yourself to death, and you _know_ how I feel about overwork on my crew."

She smiled faintly. "I haven't been on your crew in over two years."

"As far as I'm concerned, you always will be."


	2. Chapter 2

When I entered the President's field office, the only other person in the room was my best friend, Buster Kincaid.

"Hi." I sat down next to him, looking around the room. "So they called you in too, huh?"

"Yeah. And they didn't tell me anything. And I gotta tell you, Captain, it's got me a little uneasy."

Buster and I met when I was twenty-six -- on one of my first command missions. Unlike Constance, he wasn't in the PDF. He was an investigative reporter for the Planetary Post, and a damn good one at that. He was looking into the bioengineered virus outbreak on Ceres; Constance and I were hunting down a rogue PDF agent. Turned out to be the same case, and without his help, we might not have been able to prevent a Galaxy-wide pandemic. So he became the third member of our team, and due to the previously-mentioned agreement about autonomy, the PDF couldn't argue with me about it.

Now, Buster's absolutely  _ brilliant _ \-- but he's a total nervous wreck. And something told me that the look on his face wasn't just his usual skittishness about everything.

"I'm with you on that one," I admitted. "I just saw Constance -- and she's pretty on edge right now. I think it's got something to do with her."

"That's not a good sign."

"Agreed."

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, and then the President of Earth walked in.

"Captain, Mr. Kincaid -- I'm glad you could make it. We have a rather sensitive situation on our hands, I'm afraid."

"So are you finally going to tell us what's going on?" Buster asked dryly.

"Yes." The President didn't seem to notice Buster's tone as he laid out a holo-projector on the desk. "Two weeks ago, one of the Incorporated Planets' most knowledgeable and respected scientists, Professor Iris Amherst, was found dead in her office."

"Well," I said, "this explains a lot."

We knew Iris; she and Constance had been together for about a year, and they'd been good friends for a long time before that. No  _ wonder _ Constance was such a mess.

_ She's handling this a lot better than I would. _

"Was it suspicious?" Buster was frowning, the investigative gears in his head spinning a mile a minute. It was a coping mechanism, one I knew well; this wasn't the time or place to let our feelings get the best of us.

"Well... yes, but not in the manner you might think. She wasn't  _ dead, _ exactly, because she was never alive in the first place." The President activated the projector then, its inner workings whirring softly. "Have a look, gentlemen."

I studied the hologram for a few moments. It was human enough in appearance, but definitely mechanical inside -- and then I knew why we'd been called in. "A robot."

"Indeed. We're fairly sure that this was sent to replace Professor Amherst -- several people have credibly vouched for her humanity." The President smiled wryly. "And to make things worse, we have it on reliable intelligence that the technology used to build her duplicate is from nowhere else but the fifth dimension."

Something hit me then, like the feeling of falling from a shuttle hatch mid-flight -- I'd never had a pleasant experience with anything involving the fifth dimension, and I tried to think about my last encounter with its inhabitants as little as possible. "Don't tell me -- it's the Stygians, isn't it. I  _ hate _ those guys."

"Unfortunately, it is. And this means the PDF is in over their heads. We need this looked into, and quickly, but we don't have many qualified personnel, I'm afraid."

"Alright. What are we looking for?"

"We don't know how or why the robot was deactivated, or even how it works. If we can find some way to reactivate it, we might be able to figure out where it came from..."

"...And that might give us a lead on what really happened to Professor Amherst," Buster finished. "Right. So where do we start?"

"We have the robot quarantined, and we'd like to you start by working with our roboticists, who've been investigating..."

I chuckled a bit at that -- they probably didn't have much to show us. The PDF had some  _ decent _ roboticists, but the team was probably a bunch of kids fresh out of the Academy. Robotics was still a fairly new field, after all -- on Earth, at least.

If we were going to do this, we needed someone with a little more practical experience, and I knew just the guy.

"No offense, Mr. President, but I'm not sure how helpful your team's gonna be. But I know somebody who's been doing this a long time -- he'll be able to tell us a lot more than they could."

The President raised an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting we bring in Dr. Altair? I understand that you're good friends, Captain, and I have great respect for his contributions to the field -- but he's been taken off-duty indefinitely, and for good reason."

"It wasn't a good reason, and you know it. Look, it's been almost  _ two years _ since he came back from Planet X -- and nothing's happened."

_ "Yet," _ Buster muttered.

I don't get upset with Buster very often. I knew he didn't  _ like _ Altair, and I understood why... I guess. But it took a  _ lot _ of effort to keep myself calm then. "There's nobody better at this. We're gonna need his help."

"I'll consider it," the President answered, "but this isn't a step I take lightly."

"I understand."

He was right to be cautious, of course, and the PDF at large was only trying to do what was in Altair's best interest. The kind of memory damage Altair had suffered was hard enough, even without the risk of accidentally resurfacing the things we'd all rather that he didn't remember. And with the fifth dimension involved, that was a definite risk.

Altair wasn't at fault for  _ anything _ that had happened, in my eyes  _ or _ the PDF's -- but he wouldn't see it that way. If he knew what had happened while he was on Planet X, the things he'd done... no amount of good deeds would ever absolve him of the guilt. He was like that; the whole Galaxy on his shoulders, its survival or destruction dependent on what he did or failed to do.

And in a way, I thought bitterly, he was right.


	3. Chapter 3

A couple of hours later, I stood in a crowded terminal, which is not my favorite place to be. But because I'm a good friend, I decided I'd put up with it,  _ just _ this once.

That's what I told myself, anyway. The truth is, I'd readily go through hell and back again for the people I care about. And this was pretty close to it.

Thankfully, it didn't take me very long to find who I was looking for -- or, rather, for him to find me.

"Well, look who it is -- the one and only Captain Proton." Altair was smiling; the softness of his voice still surprised me a little, even after two years of having him back. "You haven't changed a bit."

He looked so much the same as I remembered, right down to the tightly-trimmed beard and mismatched tie.

_ All he's missing is the lab coat, _ I thought in amusement.

"Neither have you, Doc. How's the Academy?"

"It isn't the most exciting work," Altair confessed. "I don't  _ mind _ teaching -- actually, I like it more than I expected. But first-year students... They're a bunch of hellions."

"Speaking of hellions, where's the kid? I thought they told you it was alright for them to come along."

"They did. But to be honest with you, I didn't even  _ see  _ Spark today. I don't see them much at all, lately. Different schedules, different ends of the building.  _ And, _ for no other reason than to make me constantly nervous, they decided they'd like to give dorm living a try this semester."

"Oh, I'm sure there was another reason." I grinned -- that was absolutely the only reason Spark would move away from home. "Must be pretty quiet without them around."

"Too quiet." Altair smiled wryly. "They drop by every couple of weekends. Mostly to complain about the fact that their instructors don't let them fly unsupervised."

"I guess that's my fault."

"Without a doubt." Altair laughed at that. "So, what sort of adventures have you been having since the last time you visited? That was what, almost a year ago now?"

"Something like that. Too long, anyway. I haven't been doing anything too exciting, to tell you the truth. Cargo runs, mostly -- the same thing I was doing before we started working together. Just trying to stay out of trouble."

_ "You? _ Stay out of trouble? You can't help it -- trouble finds you like a magnet. Always has, ever since our first days in the lab."

"Sure does." It struck me then that the lab we'd worked in probably didn't exist anymore; the only things left from those days were my rocket ship, the  _ Firebrand _ , rusting in a PDF hangar somewhere, and too many old scars to count. "You ever think about asking them to put you back into research?"

"Sure. But I don't think they'd let me, at this point. I'm lucky to be doing anything at all; I'm not going to push my luck." He considered that for a moment. "Sometimes, I wish I could remember it. I'm sure I deserve it."

"It wasn't your fault," I said firmly. "You were under  _ mind control _ . You aren't responsible for anything that happened. If anything, it's my fault for not getting you out of there with the rest of us --"

"No, it wasn't your fault either. I'm glad you escaped." There was a long, heavy silence before Altair spoke again. "You came back, liberated the planet. I never would have been brave enough to do that -- I would've just... given up."

A wry smile found its way to my face then. " _ Stupid _ enough, you mean."

"That too."

We made our way to the main entrance, where Constance was waiting.

"You remember Constance Goodheart, right?" I asked.

"Of course." Altair smiled. "Lieutenant now, isn't it? Word doesn't get up to the Academy very quickly, but it  _ does _ travel eventually."

Constance returned the smile thinly, an edge to her voice. "It is, yeah. But I can't imagine there's much of a reason for that news to make its way up."

"Well, why not? A third of our students are studying mathematics and flight operations -- and from what we hear up there, you're the best the PDF's got at both."

Her smile warmed a little then. "I don't know about  _ that, _ but... it's nice to hear."

"I have it on a very reliable source."

Constance raised an eyebrow at me, and I laughed. "Alright, you got me. But I can't help it, Constance. You  _ are _ the best, and you were on my crew. I gotta brag a little."

"Thanks." She gestured down the hall. "Well, we're all here... So I guess it's time to get started."

 


	4. Chapter 4

Buster was late.

It wasn't like I had much room to talk -- let's just say that my own track record is... less than impeccable in that regard. But Buster was always either the first or last person to arrive; there was no in-between.

_ At least I'm consistent. _

Constance had been given the lead on this investigation, and I was glad for it. Over the years, her quick thinking and levelheadedness had saved my life countless times. Often, even though the ship was mine, I found himself deferring to her judgment -- outside of immediate crisis situations, she had been the team's real leader.

"Alright," she sighed. "I don't think he's gonna show up in time. One of us has to track him down, and you'll probably be nicer about it than I will. Check the atomics division -- there's a technician I've seen Buster flirting with a few times."

"Sure." I paused. "You brought one of your team onboard, right?"

"Mm-hmm. Lieutenant Juniper -- xe has a pretty good working knowledge of fifth-dimensional technology, so we hopefully won't be completely in over our heads here."

"A Stygian?"

"Yeah."

"This is gonna follow me around for the rest of my life, isn't it." I thought I recognized the name; eight years ago, when those four shuttles left Planet X, Juniper had been onboard. "I didn't know Juniper had joined the PDF when xe got to Earth."

Constance nodded. "One of the best mathematicians I've ever worked with. Doesn't say much, though."

I couldn't help but smile at that -- every Stygian that I'd ever met, friendly or not, had communicated telepathically. "I guess not. I'll go find Buster, though -- we'll meet you in the quarantine room."

"You remember where it is, right?"

"I haven't been away for  _ that _ long," I chuckled.

"Just checking."

Just as Constance had predicted, there was Buster in the atomics wing. The tech he was talking to was on break, apparently; he was laughing at something Buster had just said.

"Hey, Buster, who's your friend?"

"Oh, uh..." Buster grinned sheepishly, more than a little embarrassed -- he  _ had _ been flirting. "This is Ty. Ty, this is Captain Proton. And I guess this means I'm late, huh?"

"Yeah, just a bit."

"Oops. I, uh, guess we'd better go."

Ty grinned at that. Cute smile; I could see why Buster liked him. "You know where to find me."

As they walked away, Buster hissed, "You couldn't have just... I dunno...  _ radioed _ or something?"

"How was I supposed to know whether you had your pocket radio on you?"

"You know perfectly well that I sleep with the damn thing."

He had me there; I was the one who'd told him that he should, so he'd stop losing it. "Alright, I admit it, I was curious. Constance told me you had your eye on someone -- can you blame me for wanting to meet him?"

"Hey, look -- I do  _ not  _ have my eye on him. We're just friends, okay? We were talking about atomic propulsion --"

"Uh-huh. But hey, when it's all over, you can brag about it to your  _ friend _ . Who knows, you might even impress him a little." I grinned at him. "Now come on, loverboy, we've got a mystery to solve."

He grumbled something at me under his breath -- but he was strutting like a peacock when we got to the quarantine room.

"Sorry we're late." Buster's expression was  _ anything _ but apologetic. "There was an... incident."

Constance shot an amused glance at me, and I nodded.

"The cute boy from the atomics division?" she guessed.

Buster rolled his eyes, not meeting her gaze. "Let's just get on with this already."

"Well, alright." Constance sighed. "We've got a mess of a situation on our hands. The President's left the investigation to us -- and if you want my honest opinion, it's because he's got no idea what to do."

"I admire his confidence in us," I chuckled, "but I'm just as lost."

_ ::Well, it stands to reason that we should have a look inside the robot first.:: _ There was amusement in the thoughts that Juniper was broadcasting. It was an odd feeling, one that I'd never gotten used to -- the way that Stygians just... inserted their feelings into everyone else's heads.

"Luckily, that part's already been done for us." Constance pulled back the sheet on the examination table. "This, everyone, is the robot doppelganger of Iris Amherst."


	5. Chapter 5

A stunned silence fell on the room as we gathered around the robot. Even I had to admit was impressive -- outwardly, at least. Every detail had been meticulously executed. And according to Constance, the robot's imitation of Professor Amherst had been impeccable.

Buster cleared his throat. "So, uh, where do we start, Lieutenant? You're the one running the show, after all."

She smiled grimly. "I think I'm gonna defer to the captain on this one."

"Hey, you're only supposed to do that in crisis situations -- and I don't think this is a crisis just yet." I thought for a moment. "What do you think, Doc? I'm a little out of practice."

"Don't sell yourself short -- I bet you remember more than you think." Altair was looking over the schematics the PDF's techs had made from the initial scans. It took him all of twenty seconds before he had an idea.

_Leave it to him to just... instantly understand the extradimensional robot._

"Let's start by looking for power sources," he suggested. "Who _knows_ what this thing could do if it activated."

Constance nodded. "Juniper, what would we be looking for?"

 _::The power supply was removed when the robot was examined,::_ Juniper answered. _::It used one of our standard computer cores; they only need one source of power.::_

"For the core, yes." Altair frowned. "But what about the rest of the robot's systems? Surely a single power source wouldn't be enough --"

_::I can't help you there, sorry. I'm not much of an engineer, I'm afraid.::_

"That's alright. Robots are robots; I'm sure we can figure it out." I smiled at that, hoping it masked my uncertainty about it. We _could_ figure this out; Altair was the best at this, after all. But if our only real source of information on fifth-dimension tech couldn't help us...

"The core's suspended here -- I think these two rings are magnets, or something similar." Altair pointed to the core, roughly the size of a little kid's fist. It seemed to be lodged tightly between the rings -- but after a few seconds, I realized that it was suspended between them with just a few millimeters' clearance on either side, vibrating intensely. "But if this is electromagnetic..."

"Then there's gotta be secondary power," Constance finished. "We think that this might have been built on Earth -- its design isn't as... _alien_ as we'd expect if it wasn't."

"I'd be inclined to agree. It all makes too much sense. --What did the primary power supply look like?"

 _::Green. Circular.::_ Juniper made a pulsing motion in the air. _::Glows a little.::_

"I don't see anything like that in here. Hmm..."

"Mind if I take a look?" I asked.

"Sure."

I followed the traces from the rings around the core, but Altair was right -- I didn't see anything that looked like a power supply, fifth-dimensional or otherwise. I _did_ , however, see patterns in the circuitry that I recognized.

_...Great._

Only two people built robots like this -- and it had been a _long_ time since I'd built any robots. And that meant that there was only one place it could have come from: Planet X.

"What do you see?" Altair asked.

I shook my head. "Same as you, Doc -- nothing. We'll probably learn more from this if we take the core out -- if this thing isn't gonna try to kill us first."

"This thing hasn't moved in weeks," Buster pointed out. "It's probably pretty safe to say that it's dead."

"I don't think I want to take any chances." I looked over at Constance. "Care to be the backup plan, Lieutenant? They made me leave my raygun at the door."

Constance nodded and pulled out her raygun, holding it at close range to the robot. "Ready."

Altair raised an eyebrow at me as he took the flashlight out of his toolkit. "That's a little much, don't you think?"

"Not at all."

He pulled out the core carefully, then put it in an electrostatic-safe bag. "If someone can take this into the lab, and find a spectral analyzer..."

_::Easy. I'll go call in a favor with the physicists.::_

"Thanks, Juniper." I grinned at xem. "Need backup?"

_::Nah, but thanks. I've got a pretty good relationship with them over there; they call me when they're working on interdimensional equations.::_

"Buster and I will get these notes transcribed and sent to the President," Constance put in. "And I'll cross-reference them with what we've already got -- I'm assuming you guys are gonna have a look at the rest of the robot."

"That's what I was thinking," I said. "Actually, if you and Buster want to stick around, we could probably use the help getting everything on paper--"

"No, no, I think we'll be fine." Altair had his lab notebook out, halfway through a diagram. "I'm not too sure we'll learn anything worth reporting, anyhow."

"Alright, if you say so."

"We'll let you know when the President wants to meet," Constance said.

"Yeah, please do."

Altair waited before they'd left before he spoke again. "We both know where this came from, don't we?"

"...Yeah. I think we do." I sighed. "Hey, whatever this leads to--"

"We have to go there," he said quietly. "The only way we're going to find any answers is on Planet X."

"You don't know that."

"Well, listen. We _know_ that I built this, and where. So why should we spend who knows how long to reverse-engineer it?" The determination in Altair's eyes was unmistakable. "I had to have kept engineering notebooks on this. And they'll still be there, I'm sure of it."

 _Damn it._ He was right, of course. I'd _seen_ those notebooks, the last time I was there. A whole shelf of them, neatly organized -- twenty years of his work.

"The President won't like this," I said quietly. "Not at all. He might not let you go with us."

"I know. He'd rather have me confined to the Academy until I die." Altair swore under his breath. "But even if he just lets _you_ \-- we _need_ those notes, if we're going to do this in any reasonable amount of time. This is my fault, and I intend to fix it."

"Doc, you can't blame yourself --"

"Who else is there to blame?" He smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Well, now that you've found your culprit, I suppose you just need a motive, and the whole thing will be solved. You don't even need my notes for that -- you've always found me a bit predictable."

"Not at all. The only thing that's predictable about you is how often you surprise me." And I _meant_ that, because it was absolutely true -- just not in the way Altair might have thought.

I'd escaped Planet X, and the Stygians, eight years before. And when I returned, it was a very different place. The Stygians were nowhere to be found, but their work remained. My friend and mentor was gone, every potential for coldness and cruelty amplified until there was nothing recognizable in him. Nothing I did could bring him back, and eventually... I'd just stopped trying. Altair had become a stranger, and then, a bitter enemy. And of the many I made over the years, he was, without question, the most relentless.

I'd thought all of this was behind me. No more of this _"Defender of the Earth"_ thing, no more villains and dark forces to fight -- and, I realized, I'd just started to be okay with that. But it seemed that Dr. Chaotica, even this long after he was gone, was determined to let me have no rest.


End file.
